[from Collected Works, T.E.Brown]

SCARLETT ROCKS

I THOUGHT of life, the outer and the inner,
As I was walking by the sea:
How vague, unshapen this, and that, though thinner,
Yet hard and clear in its rigidity.
Then took I up the fragment of a shell,
And saw its accurate loveliness,
And searched its filmy lines, its pearly cell,
And all that keen contention to express
A finite thought. And then I recognised
God’s working in the shell from root to rim,
And said :—" He works till He has realised —
O Heaven ! if I could only work like Him!"

Scarlett is immediately to the south of Castletown.